It will leave a big void in the French media landscape. After the death of Jean-Pierre Elkabbach on Tuesday, reactions poured in from everyone he had interviewed at one time or another. “Jean-Pierre Elkabbach left his mark on an entire generation. I am one of them, for having hoped so much, then a young elected official, to be his guest at the microphone of Europe 1 until he gave me my chance,” reacted former president Nicolas Sarkozy on the networks social, expressing his “sadness”.
“A page in our political and media history turns with” his disappearance, said his successor François Hollande, praising a “pugnacity that no interlocutor could exhaust”. The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire paid tribute “to an outstanding observer of our national political life”.
” A test “
“My first interview was with Jean-Pierre Elkabbach! As much a test as a consecration,” wrote Rachida Dati, LR mayor of the 7th arrondissement and former Minister of Justice. “He had questioned all the heads of state since Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and brought our democratic debate to life,” underlined the president of the RN Jordan Bardella.
The communist leader Fabien Roussel, for his part, hailed a “fellow traveler of the Fifth Republic” whose “mythical exchanges with Georges Marchais will remain engraved”. An allusion to an interview in 1980 on Antenne 2 with the secretary general of the PCF who reprimanded him. The famous phrase, “Shut up, Elkabbach!” », was in fact never pronounced by Marchais, but imagined by comedians caricaturing the debate.
“The best interviewer we’ve ever had”
Unsurprisingly, expressions of respect also multiplied among journalists, of whom he left his mark on several generations. “He was the first to give me my chance,” emphasized Léa Salamé. “He quotes Mauriac at the outset of his autobiography ”I was loved… and hated” (…) We loved you,” she added. “Many of us took his interview attacks as a reference,” declared Laurence Ferrari on CNews.
“He was the best interviewer we had” commented on BFMTV Alain Duhamel – his former partner in “Cartes sur table” on Antenne 2 – praising his “incredible determination” and his “meticulousness”. “It’s still quite an era,” noted Michèle Cotta on the same channel, a member of the same “clan of journalists” and of the same generation.